Her growth seems to occur in explosive spurts. It's as if she's taking everything in for a few weeks and finally decides to confidently relay her newfound learnings. Over Christmas she started counting and could recite all colors. At day care, they say she "knows her colors like a rock star", better than all other kids in the class. Over Christmas she could say Grampy and Grambee (Grandma), but the week after she could say both "Grandpa" and "Grandma" very clearly. (Of course after we returned home from the Grandmas and Grandpas! :-) She can now jump with both feet off the ground. She knows an increasing number of shapes (currently knows circle and square), and actually counted to four the other day.
She is entirely amazed by the story of Naaman (the blind man) in the Bible. She has an illustrated children's Bible in which there is a picture of Naaman with mud on his eyes. She continually flips to that page (specifically) and repeatedly asks "what's that?" (uh-dat?).
Her tolerance for repetition is unmatched. Over the Christmas holiday, Grandma and Grandpa Carey got to experience the Frosty the Snowman DVD on a daily basis, almost to the point of exhaustion. Whenever Sesame Street is mentioned (or is on t.v.), she consistently asks for "Count". She LOVES the Count, and enjoys immitating him ("One! Two! Three! Ahh, ahh, ahh!").
Ava is ever the girly-girl, applying lip gloss (Bonne Bell lip smackers) and hand lotion whenever possible. She likes for her hair to be put in a ponytail or pig-tails. She loves to brush her teeth on her own (she crawls up the stepstool, reaches for her toothbrush and turns the water on/off by herself). Whenever she gets out of the bathtub at night, she runs into the living room and announces "I'm naked!" (sounds more like "I naked!"). It's pretty funny :-)
She is a bit more insistent lately on being independent, especially when going down the stairway. She doesn't seem too hung-up on doing things "her way" yet, fortunate for us! She does well with her manners, too, saying "please" and "thank you" often. It has been entirely too cute to watch her become "responsive" verbally. One day in November I made a request of Ava and followed it up with an "okay?," and she responded "okay". It was the cutest thing. She is much more into responding verbally these days.
She jibber-jabbers and holds conversations with us, thinking that we understand "Ava talk". She knows the word "church" and when asked who we learn about at church, she replies emphatically "Jee-jah!"
She giggles with glee when watching our friends' baby slide down the slide at the park. It's cute to watch her be happy for other kids. I don't know if I've mentioned this on the blog before, but over Thanksgiving, I mentioned to Doug that "maybe we can go to the p-a-r-k later." Ava said "the PARK! YAY! The PARK!" Yikes. Maybe we've spelled that word a little too often around her?
She is very courageous in the food department. She will try most anything that is on Mommy or Daddy's plate (at least once). She LOVES corn on the cob, rice, any kind of pasta, oatmeal with dried cranberries (our usual breakfast), cookies, crackers, most vegetables (corn, carrots, green beans, snap peas, squash), and any kind of fruit. She eats a very varied diet. She eats mixed vegetables by the handful, as if they are candy. She hasn't yet learned to appreciate broccoli or cauliflower, but we haven't exposed her to broccoli very much, either. I recently heard that a child needs to be exposed to something 15 times in order to acquire a taste for something. We're working on the broccoli...
Because this blog serves as Ava's baby book, I'm also noting that Ava weighed 24 lbs 3 oz at a doc appt when she was 21 1/2 months old. This after a very full belly of Wheat Thins and juice! ;-)
With love,
Shelly
2 comments:
I love Ava's face at the very end of the video, when she plays the keyboard and then goes back to her recorder. Very cute and animated!
Thanks, Holly! Wish we could've seen you when you were in MI! Glad you got to visit the Griswold's, too! ;-)
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